To Run In Circles
by Rosesumner
Summary: "It is harder to love than to find someone to love."    ...Something about her had an inescapable elasticity, a band built to spring back into place when faced with any resistance-though that did not stop either of the two from pushing against it.
1. Chapter 1

_**Hello again! The following is a little (emphasis on 'little') different from what I normally write. It is based on a handful of scenes I've been kicking around for some time and inspired, oddly enough, by what must be my fifty third (or fifty fourth, fifty fifth) viewing of Forest Gump. This will be a short one (anything would be, after The Girl), only six or seven chapters at most (but when are my forecasts ever accurate?), but though this first section is brief I expect the rest to be much longer.**_

_**Please forgive the rambling-in these notes and what follows. I'm reading a lot of Nabokov right now, who made drawn-out, convoluted sentences and art form and who evokes the same tendency in me (minus the art form-part). **_

_**This chapter is dedicated to:**_

_**Canceled and much-anticipated trips,**_

_**Dogtags,**_

_**Lucky numbers,**_

_**Zero bars,**_

_**Playing Hooky,**_

_**Hyphens,**_

_**People who contort their bodies in absurd and painful positions to avoid disturbing a sleeping cat (if you're one of them, you know what I mean),**_

_**And to anyone and everyone willing to stick with this mess long enough to review.**_

_**Bon Appetit**_

To Run In Circles

Chapter One

The tip of Logan's cigar bobbed, danced, to avoid the falling moisture that wished to turn it's avid glow dark. The smoke mingled strangely with the rain, like a concentrated fog or the shadow of a phantom, haunting the twined leaves of what was clenched between his teeth. He stood beneath the awning-if it could be called such, an inch or two of stone and even less cloth was decoration, not shelter-of one of the more humble entrances to the mansion. Tobacco-laced air swirled down his throat to lungs made strong from years of pushing against his unique bones, found the space not to their liking, and rushed back out to rejoin the night.

He liked the rain, though the predator in him was considering the cold and the unrelenting Wet-which heightens some scents, and hopelessly blurrs others-with a wrinkled nose and a stiff jaw. He liked having his back against the mansion, against the noise and the collective body heat, liked the dusty stagnation of even this well-groomed Outside being washed away. Liked inhaling the evidence of this cleansing, although these days the water was laden with chemicals stolen from the atmosphere, hidden in each drop like candy in an expert shoplifter's pocket. Later he would have to take a shower, remove the starch-like feeling this pollution leaves on his skin, though now he was enjoying the flow that requires clouds rather than pipes.

Logan watched a caramel membrane of water form over the cobblestone, a glaze to what had been dry and sun-worn. The yard was empty of any movement besides those colossal teardrops and the lazy twists of a glass wind-chime. There was a sundial in the center of the courtyard, a proud project of last year's shop class, and his gaze returned to it again and again though it's face was uselessly dark and weeping now. He closed his eyes, felt his chest rub against the inner weave of his shirt-the one Jean called revoltingly tacky but which had been clenched in the fists of a more appreciative woman just a week ago...who had screamed in a completely different way an hour later, spotting the key-chain bearing the Xmen insignia as it tumbled out of his pocket.

He was a few beers past what even the Wolverine would consider a limit-not itching for a fuck or a fight, as he normally would be, but bored. Tired. Despondent, like those men he'd always scorned in bars for not hiding their misery. His thoughts swirled, dry leaves in a wind too languid to carry them more than a drunkards step away. No purpose, no destination, shifting in noncommittal spurts only when the mood hits them. Sensations, fractions of ideas and recollections not unsimiliar to the mosaic of dreams.

Lightning struck to the north, less than a mile away. He heard the sizzle and hum, like a T.V's poor reception. Logan wondered idly if the storm was of Ororo's conjuring, to save her beds of flowers among other effects of the recent drought-but no. No. Of course not. It took him less time than usual to remember that Ororo was gone, that she has been for for a long time now. Strange, how long it was taking him to grow accustomed to that fact. Voices in the building behind him, some hushed but most high and chattering-children find ways to be hyper in any situation. A dog barking incessantly from the house down the road, a screech of some animal whose predator had been unfortunately untroubled by train. Vehicles, dozens, scores, each boasting a different radio station or phone call or argument between passengers.

But though Logan tried to let the rain drum this discordant symphony into the background, there was something-something that caused the nerves tied to his ears to perk up, hone their focus in on one instrument of the chorus. An engine broke free of the cluster, made it's way past the distant neighbors, past the point that meant it's goal was Somewhere Else. On to Xavier's land, down the picturesque lane with it's fragile and too-generic beauty. The tires found the entrance, crawled up the gravel with the growl of a exhausted and slightly hoarse beast.

He tracked it without moving from his position, listened with less curiosity than instinct. Few visited the mansion anymore, though in the past benefactors and guests could be counted on to appear every week in well-fed and smiling skin, tailored suits. Now those who arrive were desperate, runaways or parents hoping to divest themselves of a child exhibiting traits that would turn them from pillars to outlaws of a community...Or else, more representatives of a government whose obliviousness and toleration toward the school had long been shed. He doubted this car was of the latter category, smelling too much of rust and not enough of arrogance, but you never knew.

It did not pull into the garage, but followed the same path that delivery vans took-tomorrow Jean would complain about the tire treads in the grass. It drew around the side. His side, in fact, a good choice for those familiar with the layout of the building and relying on a quick escape. And if he were to take a few steps, cross the courtyard to that stone arch, he could see...

Maroon paint, dark like partially dried blood. A Camero with more dents than not, a drained and crumpled tin can. Strips of cardboard and tin foil taped over the holes in the back window, thin tires that sat an inch deep in mud the consistency of saliva, greasy and threadbare. It's driver was an abstract and sullen shadow that remained behind the wheel for a long time, long enough for Logan and the sea and the whole world to take several deep breaths. Then a creak, a protesting scream of metal as the door swung open, and the shadow climbed out.

The figure draped in dark greens and black moved slowly, as the old or injured do. Headless of the downpour, or seeming to be. A jacket of thick wool covered most of her, though it lacked a hood and her locks-streaked white through yet another fashion beyond his comprehension or patience-were soaked within moments. Slim, young, and Logan admired the wholesome curve of her breasts beneath that jacket as well as other pleasing features even as he clocks, measures, and categorizes those that might prove vulnerable or threatening in a fight (thought there appeared to be few of the latter). She walked to the tail of the Camaro, removed from the back seat a duffel bag and from the trunk a second(or even third, fourth)hand suitcase. The easy lift and maneuvering of these suggested that the action had been performed many times before.

The oppressive sky, hanging like a circus tent about to collapse, a child's fort who's supporting chairs are about to tip over; the dim and deceitful light; their inexplicable aloneness and something single-minded in her movements suggested a certain surreality. This wasn't real; they weren't real-their surroundings were nothing but a stage and theater props. Nothing had existed before this moment, and it was possible nothing would after. He felt suddenly and violently nauseous, and swallowed the sensation away.

Still, he watched her drag the suitcase through the slush, listened to her socks squelch within old and certainly not waterproof boots. A creature with the huddled dignity of a refugee or a prisoner, being herded into their respective camps. Making his judgments, assumptions, as those who have been trained to rely on first impressions for convenience and survival do. Yes, definitely another runaway. Another stomach to growl behind the already bursting-at-the-seams walls, splitting all the amenities once so happily and freely provided.

But when she finally glanced up, finally noticed him in the arch as minor heroines or token victims in crime dramas spot, belatedly and fatally, the mugger, the rapist, the murderer, in the alley. She stared, her neck straightening in that perfect, horrible, awareness-a look that was the same no matter what species the Hunted belonged to. It was not until later that Logan would think about this moment, in one of his memory's many renditions, and realize that despite her expression, despite the swift addition of fear to her scent, her stride never so much as faltered. A small, meaningful detail forgivably overshadowed by the sudden visibility of her face.

She was both young and older than he'd expected. In her early twenties, with full lips and an oval, yet starved face...though she couldn't have been completely destitute, for those ivory streaks completely coated the roots of her hair-the dye job must have been recent. A long neck, a complexion that matched the tint of the moon. Breasts that were even more satisfying viewed frontally than in profile. Wide, nice eyes that shifted from alarm to intentional detachment.

He moved-not enough to entirely block her path, but enough to deter any thought of passing him.

"'Scuse me." Her voice was thick with weariness and The South. And there was a fragrance, wavering on the edge of identification, behind those naturally feminine aromas and skin that yearned for soap-but it danced out of his focus.

"You a mutant?"

"What do you think?", she asked, in a tone both flat and over-prepared for confrontation, throwing with all of her force a ball he had merely rolled to her.

"What's your power?"

"Telekinetic castration. What's yours?" He blinked. The lack of amusement or irony in her expression might have sold him, if her scent had been equally free of a lie. Logan grunted.

"Anyone expecting you?"

"Yes." Impatient now, more irritated than fear should allow and her clothes were starting to resemble blankets pulled too soon from a washing machine. But these were standard questions put to every newcomer; this was not a motel and he was not the polite clerk in the lobby-and entertainment was in limited and often repetitive supply these days.

Logan jerked his head in the vague direction of her luggage, or perhaps her breasts. "You got somewhere to put those?"

"Yes."

He raised an eyebrow, looked at her coolly and lengthily, as she began to shiver and acquire a strange hardness at the same time, like some molten core was loosing it's heat and solidifying. "Want me to take you to The Professor? Let him know you're here?"

The coldness that had nothing to do with the weather slipped away from her expression as quickly at it had come, wispy strip of fabric that had grazed, briefly and insufficiently, on the barken fingertips of some tree before the wind carried it away. Her gaze fell to some place not visible to any eyes but her's.

She sighed. "He knows I'm here."

A nod to his right, another "Excuse me", and this time Logan stepped aside. Her elbow, her shoulder-a slender thing beneath the sopping coat-brushed his chest as she passed, and the scent he'd been struggling to name offered itself to him with sudden submission. It was certainly not an unfamiliar mixture; he couldn't understand why his nose had found it so foreign-or appealing. A little marijuana, a few tears, and a great deal of hopelessness...And beneath those, so subtle it was overlooked in his triumph of recognizing the others, a fraction of something that in his long and mostly unrecollected years had never touched his airways.

.

**We can't keep meeting like this. **

**...We-ell, I'm embarking on a new (you thought I was going to say 'journey', didn't you? Didn't you? I'm not. Too cheesy. Gotta pretend I have some dignity.) fic, one I hope you will both enjoy and, more importantly (isn't that pathetic? Yes, I am that desperate), review. I'm never sure how I feel about a story until I am two or three chapters in, and I cannot begin to express how greatly you feedback would be appreciated/my nails bitten nervously in the meantime.**

**Stalling. Anxious, knowing full well how my insides will be twisted up after first clicking that 'submit' button...Ah, well...Here we go...**

**...*click***


	2. Chapter 2

_**This is dedicated to those kind enough to review the previous chapter. It is those like you who get me from week to week. I hope you will enjoy the following, and offer your feedback once more.**_

To Run In Circles:

Chapter Two

Scott waited until the end of the meeting to introduce her. The proposals of new and old congressmen regarding mutants; a group of FOH supporters for sure and members possibly, and a Cajun who might-or-might-not be willing to share intel; an internet-promoted drug that promised to eliminate the X-gene still popular though it had been linked to seventy-six miscarriages.

All the while, the refracted scarlet of Summer's much-beloved laser pointer danced in sweeps across the brunette's quietly, and morosely, attentive face. Their eyes had met once, and not again, though Logan's had found their way to her in visual circuits of the room that seemed to have no other stopping place. Part boredom-Scott's briefings were so depressingly similar (Logan frequently accused him of recycling notes) they could not help but evoke the impatient emotion-part mildly lecherous curiosity, and in part an irritation he could neither understand nor defend. Who _was _she?

"-and we welcome to the team Rogue, who will be serving in a non-fighting, secondary capacity on missions," Scott concluded shortly, taking this on to, with the same breath and voice, the (shrinking) list of hospitals who continued to accept mutants. "Nice to have you with us again."

She nodded in courteous acknowledgment of this but did not look up. Scott packed away his things, offered some unheard and unrequited words of dismissal, and accompanied Jean out of the conference room-to teach, to eat, or perhaps (since this was Friday) to head upstairs for whatever dry, missionary fumblings they considered sex, while Logan's brain was still busy turning over that word, 'again'.

Although she, Rogue, had risen from her chair no quicker than he, in a matter of seconds she had placed between them more people and space than, Logan told himself, he was willing to cover, though his nose flared and his legs gave starchy resistance against any direction but her's. He watched her disappear up a staircase, listened to her unseen progress while staring at the last place a corner of her leg had been visible-for much longer than he could offer reason.

She's looked and certainly, inexpressibly, smelled better than she had last night after washing both herself and her clothes. Rogue's hair (full, brushed to a clean glossiness) had been pulled into a sharp ponytail, displaying the full pallor of the solemn features beneath and the shadow of twin moons cradling her eyes. She'd worn a maroon blouse with tan cargo pants that, intentionally or incidentally, matched the paint and decor of the mansion. If it had been an attempt to blend in, it had been a gross failure; she stood out as much as the scent-now burnished and intensified with her cleansed body-that still eluded identification.

::::::::::::::

He learned later that Rogue (a title he only grudgingly used and just as unwillingly refrained from mocking. These days all the residents possessed one of the preposterous nicknames-though the protection afforded by these offered little protection from a government that had begun making hating and hunting them a top priority) had been given Ororo's old room. It was tactically not mentioned at the meeting, though space was in short supply and all had been wondering what nook she would be crammed into. Occupancy was another thing the officials were keeping an eye on: one student, one extended guest, one pitied stray kitten over capacity would have the much-coveted excuse to shut the school down. And every runaway accepted meant one more they would soon have to turn away.

Still, the sanctity of the attic room where no one had tread but the weather witch possessed by anyone she, struck a special, dumbfounded pain in each of the resident's souls. A silent emotion, however, because none wished to be the one to give it voice.

And Logan, a close friend of death but not half so familiar with its sibling grief, wondered bemusedly if four months was the traditional point when the dead were replaced and forgotten.

:::::::::::::::::

Approximately three minutes and twenty seconds after leaving the jet hangar (it might have been three flat, if not for the infuriatingly fixed paced of the elevator), Logan was in the kitchen. His right hand was slightly curled, mentally already gripping the chilled glass, a ghost that preceded that wonderfully bitter drink already courting his throat. His course-not so much a beeline but an arrow, the trajectory of a bullet-was impeded. Stupidly, dangerously, unintentionally.

A plate (whose thousands of scratches at the forks and knifes of as many students were beginning to show, even to those without Logan's vision-war wounds of the tableware) sat on the island, crowned with a sandwich that seemed to contain every odorous topping possible. The refrigerator door was tauntingly opened, a tendril of its cold and his beer's scent stroking his cheek like a familiar lover. And standing within its one-armed embrace, directly blocking his goal, was a head of hair whose white streaks spilled from behind the crescent of her ears. A triangle of visible neck, a languid ridge of a curving spine. A line of flesh where her shirt had tugged up and a humble wink of her underwear's elastic band, all culminating in double mounds designed by some generous deity to fill another's hands.

Logan drew closer-though whether the aforementioned or alcohol was his magnet is unclear. Slow, quiet steps, a predator's helplessly instinctual glide.

Over the incline of Rogue' shoulder he glimpsed a hand skimming over the items in the fridge's steel racks and stretching-_oh god, just one step closer and he could_-toward the sloping necks of a bottle who's label read, 'Molson'.

"Those are mine."

She shrugged her indifference. Her fingers changed their route smoothly, closed around a container of pomegranate juice whose shape abstractly and far too closely resembled female curves for Logan's comfort. Rogue straightened, gave him an inscrutable look she had to her head up to deliver-he'd taken that step closer, but her heart had only offered a few beats that may have been considered out of time. Then she slid past him and, though he expected her to take her edible loot upstairs, as she'd been doing all week, took a seat at the marble island. The scrape of the plate pulled across its surface was much too loud in the otherwise silent room.

Logan picked a beer from the collection within the sterile cold. He glanced at her, thought simultaneously of how long it had been-almost two weeks, and "What the hell", and chose a second bottle. The rubber of his boot closed the metal door, their attached legs crossed the floor in two strides. He set the golden drought in front of her, set himself on the stool opposite. Her plumb lips narrowed, but she accepted the former offering unhesitatingly. The thumb of her right hand removed the cap with practiced ease.

"You didn't go tonight." His own lid came off with a wet plop.

"You're right," Rogue agreed, ignoring the question in his questionless statement. "I didn't." She brought her strongly-scented sandwich to mouth. She took big bites, for such a little person. His eyebrow took an escalated position.

A moment, and a silence he expected her to hold. Scott had looked at him with blank disinterest when Logan had asked where the new kid was, before the X-jet rose and took off for another bloody attempt to help a thankless world. He stared at her chin, round as a budding peach, down her neck to the triangular hollow. The rim of her shirt, the fleshy, pebbled hills draped in two layers of clothing more than necessary. To the edge of the counter, where her body disappointingly became hidden.

"I wasn't needed," she said suddenly, and something in her voice was responding both to his inquiry and one no one else could hear.

"Forty-nine members of that crazy fucking gun cult. I think we could have found something for you to do." At least the kid could have mopped up the aftermath.

"I'm noncombat."

"Nobody's noncombatant."

"And yet, I am. Such a paradox."

Logan looked her up and down, an enjoyable activity. He smirked reflexively, but the words his mouth framed were not the ones his expression suggested. "Need some training?"

Her sandwich was gone, though he couldn't remember seeing her take any more bites-only the pink play of her knuckles, the occasional glimpse of the blue 'Y' within her wrist, a sliver of white teeth. How long had it taken them, to exchange so few words?

"Who said I couldn't fight?" Rogue cocked her head at him, stood calmly. She put the plate in the sink, left him and it-though she took the rest of her beer upstairs with her.

Logan had hardly touched his.

:::::::::::::::::

She was only a mild curiosity, a low-powered blip on his radar. Those half-encounters and thoughts depicted here are meaningful only when the majority of daily interactions are cut away. Whole days would pass where Rogue would not cross his path and barely his mind, though they lived in unimaginably close quarters for a so-called mansion.

A faint interest, a habitual twitch in his groin, a possible vessel in which he might siphon a fraction of his restlessness. The amount of viable distractions shrank by the day-Logan could not risk becoming too much a regular in the local bars, and could not afford to be far from the mansion for fear of who or what might descend in his absence. Only so many fights could be provoked and exacerbated outside gas stations and cigar shops, and only so many women picked up in grocery stores, parking lots or mildly populated strip malls before he was in danger of being recognized-not least by two of the jealous latter category. And the stock of in-house female diversions had run dry, leaving only the irritatingly young and the pedophilic young, neither of which he was yet desperate enough to proposition.

She was not a crush, not an obsession-though he found himself collecting facts about her like slightly-valuable stamps, coins...She knew where all the silverware was kept. She waved to the only gardener who'd not resigned, and his responding grin had not been that of a stranger's. Two others had used the word 'again' in welcoming her. No one that he heard had offered her a tour. She liked to run in the border between afternoon and evening, but wore long sleeves and old jeans during even this sweaty activity-a cutter? a junkie? Rogue favored the public road beyond the mansion gates for her jogs, and ignored his growling reprimands that it was too dangerous until he began to accompany her on the secluded route-after which hers became the domesticated paths of the mansion's grounds.

She liked eating in her room, or outside-seeming to best prefer the shade of dogwood trees. She smiled at the students, willingly assisted with whatever chores the mansion presented, but rarely shared her presence otherwise. His eyes were not the only ones that followed Rogue-one of his gathered facts that both encouraged and inexplicably infuriated him, and he always seemed to catch the tail end of a discussion, story, a compliment or warning referencing her. And furtive or confused-feigned or real-expressions when he investigated these awoke an instinct that this secrecy and his bafflement was not incidental.

And sometimes she wore gloves-elbow length or more, a strange accessory for one whose attire was usually so plain. Those were the days she spent hours in Xavier's office, and left with a paleness to rival her own usual pallor and that of the dead.

A slight, half-interest, and nothing more.

She wasn't.

She wasn't.

::::::::::::::::::

He entered the darkened room just as Rogue was sitting down. A glass of water on the couch-side table, a bag of Oreos in her lap (though purchased with what money, Logan had not a clue. She had not done any work for the team, and Xavier could no longer afford allowances or snacks). An exasperated glance when he stepped in and then a cool one-and her thoughts were as clear as if she'd laid them out on a table to dissect. One look, and he could see her weighing whatever had driven her to the entertainment in the middle of the night against his power to drive her out. Logan grunted, bridled at the unspoken insult. He did not know what Rogue had against him (she normally fled too soon for more than the bare minimum of flirting-he'd barely even touched her breasts those last two times), why the sharp edge of her being was always turned toward him or why it frustrated him less than it should.

"Trouble sleeping?" The sweat, which may as well have been the water from that monstrous tank of the lab and his nightmares, was cooling on his own back.

"Mm-hmmm." She fiddled with the remote, giving it much more attention than it deserved, pressed the red _POWER_ button, and with a burp of static the dark screen was overtaken by a wash of color and movement. Logan sat down on the couch, the farthest end, too much unbroken sinew tying him to the dream to tempt himself or her back to bed, no matter which activity would take place beneath its covers. (He did not, however, choose one of the many and more platonic armchairs, lest his lower half decide to perk up).

He watched the profile of Rogue to his right, her features both soft and sharp-befitting the popular silhouette on an antique broach. Anyone else would have been apologizing by now, in tears or in whimpers, at the very least stuttering as they passed him the remote control (the residents had not been spared from the consequences of his boredom). But Rogue did not so much as glance at him, and Logan found his lips still pressed together, the complaint comfortable in his throat and showing no sign of leaving even as she flicked through channels he would normally only submit to under the heaviest of restraint.

A Lifetime movie; an ancient sitcom whose laugh track never varied; a documentary on Marie Antoinette; a Sex and the City repeat (she changed that one quickly, thankfully, otherwise his patience and his half-hearted disinclination towards hitting women may have vanished); a Law and Order rerun. If she was searching for something in particular, she didn't find it. Soon the selection of channels dwindled to low budget science fiction, a handful of sports programs he urged her toward as if he had the telepathic will of Xavier, paid programing and the nightly news.

A chubby man covered in wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair, interviewing a woman over an orange table. A running caption across the bottom of the screen summarizing pieces of someone's anguish-an infant beaten to death by a woman's frustrated lover; and outbreak of fires in Tennessee that had swallowed thirteen homes; a popular church taken in the wave of a car bomb-Homeland Security investigating.

_"-so you do not feel that _Brown vs Board of Educations _applies anymore?"_

_"Of course I do. I'm not a racist. But only to humans, a class to whom these mutants, by definition, do not belong." _

Rogue's thumb came down on a button with an up arrow. The pair on the screen were replaced by a woman with a pug face and yellow hair, sprayed into gravity-defying heights. She spoke directly to the camera, as if it were a misbehaving and unforgivable child._ "...They run rampant in our society, doing as they please as if their so-called 'gifts' exempt them from the law. If we-"_

_"...with the deficit at a historical peak, currently the sole opposing argument against the act seems to concern the money registering every mutant in the country would require-"_

_"...Why should they be hiding? If they mean us no harm, why would they not assent to an national register? The crimes committed by the guilty can be linked to their respective mutants without unjustly persecuting them all-"_

_"When will something be done? My wife is afraid to send our children to school, in case there's one of /ithemi in the classroom as well. Who knows what one of those monster-"_

_"'Scientists'-and I use that title liberally-claim mutancy is as hereditary as handedness. Why, then, do you suppose that people my become ambidextrous, but these individuals cannot exhibit the same control over their genetic abnormalities?"_

_"-more on the mutant activists linked to Al Qaida when we return to FOX-" _

Rogue sighed, and in the exhale was the sound of the entire world turning to dust. She played with the lid to the remote's batter casing-opening it, closing it, opening it, closing it. She huffed, changed the channel a few more times, chewed on her lower lip. And though Logan was sure Rogue hadn't pressed any of the volume buttons, the noise of the television faded to half a murmur.

Her mouth looked very pink. And very soft.

"Do you like football?", she asked him.

.


	3. Chapter 3

To Run In Circles:

Chapter Three

If Ororo had been there, they could have relied on her to darken the night, like spilling ink over penciled script. The jet would have been cloaked in fog, wrapped as one bundles an infant. They settled for an ambiguous midnight and a grove of generous pine trees. Risky, still, but they hoped the authorities would arrive long after the thrum of the jet's engine faded in the air.

The metallic bird did not strike, but grazed the yard's downy grass with the expertise of its namesake settling on a telephone wire. Scott was a much better pilot these days. Logan couldn't quite recall when this change had come to be.

Jean pulled her hair into a ponytail; the curls sprang from the band like the flame from a rocket's tail. She rechecked the laces on her boots, twice. Her lips were tight, eyes dark, and when her husband brushed her hand in reassurance she snatched it away. When it came to separating one's emotions from the necessary mind-frame of battle, Jean was cold in a way even Logan envied. The other, moderately newer team members feigned bravery with tight chins and stoic silence, or overly nonchalant jokes. The faint, hairless wobble of the first and the absence of laughter at the second betrayed both

But as Scott went over the strategy a final, exasperatingly needless time, Logan was staring at her. At Rogue. Not that invisible, untraveled distance his eyes usually fixed upon-the place of darkness that the animal in him sought like a spark yearning for its mother flame. She distracted him, distracted the monster from its violent meditation.

She'd never gone with them before.

He heard Summers say that Rogue would not deboard, that she would remain until "after". Logan did not pause, did not stop to wonder at the fact that all of Scott's obsessive, anal attention to detail and the sum of his instructions to her was "after". He heard, but it was still a shock to see the legs of the team descending the metal steps while hers remained firmly planted.

He stood, cracked his neck, glared at her long enough for Jean to screech for his immediate haste. She seemed relaxed, sitting not on the edge of the chair but deep into the stiff cushion of its back. Guns awaited those under even her delicate age just down those steps, and she continued to sit there, calmly. Breathe, calmly. Stare back at him, calmly-and if those level eyes were wet, they were tears enthusiastically overlooked.

"Noncombat," she said, in a voice that tried to be loud and steady but failed at both.

He grunted, or growled, or both, and turned sharply away. What did she have to smell so frightened about?

:::::::::

A bloodbath. A bloodshower, sideways because there were few taller than Logan. Flesh his soap, cartilage his sponge. Scalps, misshapen and fuzzy rugs. He licked the liquid copper from his lips again and again. This was a good one. Fourteen-no, fifteen, there's one hiding behind that table-bodies, or what used to be, meshed together like a particularly thick soup.

Though part of him-the part that screamed in the night while the other popped its claws, that tried to drink itself into oblivion while its brother self never stopped seeking the enemy-was saying enough; it was too much, too much; he was getting carried monstrously away, the animal was rejoicing. Able to release some of the energy kept chained for so long, too long.

He'd been given the main halls, the front of the building. A colossal distraction, his presence absorbing the focus and resistance these...Strange, Logan couldn't quite recall who it was they were attacking. The rest of the team had split upon entry, scurried down obscure side passages to converge at some point he remembered as little as he was interested. He'd been told the objectives of the mission, of course. Repeatedly. All the details of why this carnage was necessary and what catastrophe it would avert had been discussed in briefings, in lectures both official and not, in breathless tones over quick dinners.

But the vapor of death could blur the mind as much as the eyes. These looked like FOH, he thought, or had before their recognizable features had been so thoroughly removed, but what did he know? What did it matter? Does a bullet hesitate once it's aimed and launched from the gun, because of the name of its target? Even catastrophe becomes dull with repetition.

Logan breathed in the fumes of what he had done, watched particles only he could see swirl, a dance just for him. His heart was pounding, a furious, fleshy beast, the determined engine of a ship in turbulent water. He drew his forearm across a weather-beaten, a time-beaten, a pain-beaten face, but as both were equally filthy the action did little good. He told himself it didn't matter what he could and could not remember. The blood would be the same.

::::::::

She was brought in after a tidal wave of voices on the COMs had swept over the static ocean. After most of the team had spilled from the branching corridors to the base of the trunk, clutching boxes and folders with coded tabs like prizes from an exceptionally boring carnival. After Scott had pushed-with more care than he might have were the animal more dampened in the other man's eyes-a stack of the former at Logan. After the so-called leader muttered, 'come on', glanced with a sharp eye toward his wife but a deliberately glassy one to everything under his boot.

Jean's back-partially hidden by the ringlets that had escaped their band-moved out the door, but she was back before they reached it themselves. The files that had been cradled in her arms more attentively than any child had, supposedly, been left on the Blackbird, but she's substituted them with Rogue. Like an unwilling shadow, like a child helplessly following a stranger in the woods, like a calf following its kin into the butchery, she trailed after Jean.

She was a bizarre vision in this atmosphere, and something in him stumbled as if it had misjudged a step on a unforgiving staircase. He'd been angry at the idea of her thinking she could be spared from fighting when no one was, anymore. But now the sight of her scratched at him. She shouldn't be...she shouldn't...

Logan's gaze touched the 'V' between her eyebrows, the hands clasped at her waist like a schoolgirl or an inmate. The contracting in her neck as she swallowed, again and again. The too-pinched fabric at her breasts and the too-loose fabric at her hips-who had the uniform originally belonged to? The glossy leather in the crease behind her knee. And the gaze might as well have been the brush of fingers. Rogue looked at him as they passed, and in her face was the kind of plea men fall over their own blades to answer. A sentimental cliche, but Logan found his foot moving forward obligingly. Unexamined instincts sparking to so direct a look, like the sighting of a rescue boat to the drowned-though for which of the two this analogy applied is unclear.

But then her eyes fell to his wrist, to a surprisingly large clump of someone's hair that had snagged on a button, to an arm limp and owner-less on the floor. Its fingers still clutched the gun it had weilded so earnestly half an hour ago. And that expression turned to one that struck the animal like a stone, required it to clamp down on the restraints of that so distant and buried man-a strange and rare reversal of roles.

Rogue blinked, her lashes bearing too much unhappy moisture to uphold. A tremor ran across her shoulders like the most concentrated of winds; she followed Jean down one of the thin halls without another glance toward Logan or anything else.

"Let's go, Wolverine. Time to reboard."

"What is she doing?"

"Her job," Scott told him, curtly. But as that had never and would never be an acceptable answer to give the Wolverine, he amended, "Helping us gather intel. It's what she's here for."

:::::::::

Her eyes were bloodshot, like the most devoted of students or alcoholics. So pale that when her teeth dug into the bottom lip-nervously, or convulsively-only the faintest pink appeared before the white returned. Logan wondered absently where all the blood went when it was so fearfully drained from a girl's face.

They had been loading the files onto the jet, shoving them into a metal cabinet that had always reminded him of a bread oven. His palm left a smear of browning red on the steel, and this may have been connected to the violent hitchings of some of the less deadened team member's stomachs.

Normally this time would be of utmost importance. Normally the air would be thrust from his lungs with barely enough a pause to let any in. Normally he would hardly be in a state of mind to help the team with such menial tasks, to do anything but sit in a corner and restrain himself from popping his claws at the people an ignorant person would call his friends. Normally every gram, every liter, every inch-whatever it was measured in-of willpower would be called on. To get himself under control or at least under one well faked; to move and speak as if every instinct awoken were not the bloody ones of animals; to convince himself that sharp saliva was not welling among his gums and that his darker urges has been sated. Normally all surroundings and post-mission events would turn foggy and pale in comparison to these tasks. Normally, but this time...

When he caught sight of her, the team was dutifully strapping themselves into their seats and Scott was manipulating the buttons laid before the pilots seat like a special feast, pressing the Bird into life. Jean must have sent him a signal to do so, she was the one person Scott would never even prepare to leave without-but not one of the COMs spoke.

They came stumbling across the grass-or rather, one of them did. Rogue tripped and weaved like a ten year old unused to the more dizzying of amusement rides, a civilian in a war-zone who's just watched an ivory home turn his home into dust, brick crumbs. Her hair-though it had been cold inside the building-had become sweaty, plastered to her face like overboiled noodles. Jean hovered behind her, asking worried questions, hands fluttering in the region of her arm, her waist without actually coming to land. As if the strength of her desire to help were equal to actual aid.

Neither of the women carried a box, or a file of documents.

.


	4. Chapter 4

To Run In Circles:

Chapter Four

"Sit down, Wolverine," Scott told him irritably, a parent at the end of his rope with a misbehaving child. "Sit down. We're about to-"

He was down the Blackbird steps in a few pumps of his legs and his heart. The grass was almost blue in the tint of night, scratching against and under his boot like the bristles of an antique brush-it would be hours yet before the dew of morning softened them. Over the modest field, relatively quiet in the hush that claims even the voices of insects in the aftermath of battle. The earth stunned into silence, shocked by a brutality you'd think it would be used to by now. To her, soaked in both sweat and distress. To her, the soldier whose brain continues to send the signals to walk but forget to inform its host that it has been shot. To her, and to Jean, following as dedicated and useless as a shadow.

Her face, first white and oddly blurry even after Logan blinked, was a palette on which jars and tubes of paint had broken, and smeared indiscriminately-its artist renouncing his craft in a furious tantrum. There was lethargy, befitting the very drugged or already sleeping more than this miraculously upright creature. There was pain, though he could not spot the source, and Logan told himself that the flurry of bitter sparks in his chest was simple frustration at this. There was a sudden wash of anger and fear-of a tint very different from the sort that usually colored her features. For a moment, for that moment when Rogue raised bleary eyes to his, he thought she...it seemed like she was someone else entirely. Even her scent rippled differently in the air, his airways, but no. No. A trick of his senses, perhaps, though they had never been one for pranks before.

When the next hue to distinguish itself on the palette was that despairing plea, that hybrid between the gasping hope and anguish of the drowning, the previous impression was forgotten.

"Logan, what do you think you're doing?"

"What happened? What happened to her?"

"Noth-it's okay. It's under control."

"What's under control?"

"Go back to the jet, Logan."

He snarled at Jean, his arms already moving, reaching to catch the younger woman though she was still yards out of range. Her ankles bent outward with every step, left slender dents in the parched dirt and threatened to snap from the pressure of their underpaid job. A softening around her eyes, now focused, now not-did they turn blue for a instant? Logan expected her to fall against him, into him, with the ease and the sharp relief of a puzzle piece finally submitting to its designated niche, its soft cardboard offering no resistance.

Nothing sexual about the gesture, and if there was that meaning was assigned later. At wonce he was responding with the instinct of a well-trained soldier spotting something that must but hasn't been done. He would have asked her, Kid, what's wrong? You're alright, Kid, its going to be okay. Over and over, like the chorus of a particularly repetitious song, carrying her to the jet and whatever medical care she required. Whether this action, these words, would have been implemented with more fervor than they might have been with another injured member of the team can never be known. The moment she could have stood in the breath of his half-cupped hands, the static of his leather uniform, Rogue twisted away. Spun, lurched, out of his grasp with the grace of the drunk, the feverish, the insane.

"Don't touch me," her chapped lips spat. "Don't you _fucking_ touch me." Hate twisting her features, swirling them like poisonous ice-cream. Hate all the more scorching for being undeserved but, as ever with that emotion, cradling a well of fear like an infant-a liability that must be held secure at all costs.

He had no time to speak, no time to overrule her protests. Jean was snapping at him, though later he wouldn't be able to recall any of the fanged words specifically. She-shrouded in apprehension herself-urged him to go, shoved at his back ineffectually and unwisely. She put herself between Logan and the girl, the motion and its accompanying gestures appearing to say, "Here, see? I _am_ helping you. I _am_ protecting you." Still, none of her kindly ushering hands made contact with her charge's teetering spine.

Rogue made an indistinguishable noise of disgust at Jean and her efforts and turned from them both. Her broken march continued to the Blackbird. She never fell, and Logan's assistance was not offered again-both perhaps aided by Jean's telepathy.

:::::::

They must have been given a command from Scott. A subtle one, a reminder of some previously issued order or one gien while its subjects were still outside. In any case, the junior team sat silently and almost expressionlessly as Rogue boarded the jet. There was none of the fuss over an injured member of the group, no voiced concern, no questions of what had happened or how it had happened, no offers to assist Jean in whatever emergency treatment might be called for. No off-color and unamusing joke from Allerdyce, "I though we squashed them all. Was one moving without its head?"

Rogue tripped past them, past the rows of free chairs to one at the back. Her lower self turned, and with this the last of her energy sank down some unseen drain. She fell into the seat's embrace as if she had no bones, as clumsy and heartsickening as watching the elderly shift from wheelchair to bed. Has she misjudged her position in the slightest Rogue would have found herself on the unforgiving steel floor-though this might have made little difference to her. The redheaded doctor glowered when he folded his body into the seat across the aisle from Rogue's, but pinched her lips in restraint.

Ashen, like the dead and embalmed too late into decomposition. Bloodshot eyes and teeth that snagged upon colorless lips every time she shivered. Jean fluttered over her with almost joyous concern. "What should I do? What do you need?" Logan had never heard her employ these words, that tone, and had never imagined that he might.

"No," Rogue said, a mumble with the edge of impatience. For a second it seemed as if she would say something else, but her lips pressed together and did not part again.

Maybe she's fine, he told himself. Kid probably saw a little more blood than she was used to, got queasy. Too much for her delicate stomach.

The thought passed through his awareness with calm rationality-and a moment later he shoved Jean's presence from his mind.

He did not notice when the Blackbird lifted its wings to meet the sky, nor when Jean left for her place beside her husband, or the sidelong glances of those who had not fully left childhood but had been transformed into weapons through necessity. He was watching Rogue's eyes drift shut, and was aware of nothing else.

::::::

He expected she would go straight to her room, understanding-if not fully-by now that there would be no overnight stay in the MedLab for Rogue. Logan shadowed her faltering steps through the hangar, through the mansions imitation hospital, through the hall that had once been immaculate but was now cluttered with all the matter they could not risk leaving where government eyes could too easily stray.

She was a bit steadier now on those trim legs; perhaps the flight had helped her to recharge-or perhaps that was his imagination. In the elevator-which Logan slid into just as its sideways mouth was closing-Rogue squeezed herself into the corner, the perpendicular walls holding her like wings. She pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezed her eyes shut as if attempting to fuse her upper and lower lids together, kneaded her temples with her fingertips and periodically sent him little glares of irritation.

"Are you okay?"

"Peachy keen."

"Tell me what happened back there, Kid."

"You know, maybe you should take a shower. You've got a little blood...everywhere."

"Unless you're inviting yourself, shut the fuck up and answer the question."

"How can I answer if I'm shutting up? Those are not requests one can fulfill simultaneously." He was surprised she managed to get the words out, slurring and speaking at top speed simultaneously, thrumming with false and sickening cheer. Her's was the amusement of a grimace, of giddy insanity, of the breathy inhale before a sob.

"What's wrong with you?", Logan asked, alarmed and faintly repulsed.

Rogue's sneer-pained and unconvincing in the fist place-slipped off, its adhesive quality as weak as a child's glue-stick. He watched her fiddle with the edges of her gloves-strange, he hadn't notice that she'd been wearing them tonight-pulling them up with almost violent insistence.

"There is nothing wrong with me," she told him, and the elevator doors opened.


	5. Chapter 5

_**I'm not entirely sure how to begin this note, though I've sat here trying to for a good fifteen minutes. Isn't that a crazy thing to get writer's block with? I want to ask for forgiveness. This update is horribly, grossly late, and I'm sure that a few of you are rather inclined to hit me-which I probably deserve.**_

_**There has been a great number of personal, familial, and friend-regarding crises on this side of the screen that has seen fit to steal my time and energy. Coupled with those, perhaps caused by them, a depressing lack of inspiration that only worsened the longer I went without posting (translated: "without reviews", my embarrassingly vital drug) I am very, very sorry, and hope your interest in this fic has not been spoiled in the meantime.**_

_**This is for Sarah, who deserves so much more than she's getting right now. And for Litlen, who remains faithful and kind despite fact that I've not exactly kept to my promise.**_

_**I hope you enjoy.**_

_**.**_

To Run In Circles: Chapter Five

The carpet had just been vacuumed. By one of the students, presumably, working to earn his or her place in the school before they were old enough to do so in blood. Half of the housekeepers had resigned, fearful (rightfully, and belatedly) of being targeted for consorting with mutants. The rest, save two, had been gently (over-gently, with monetary and telepathic encouragement to hold their tongues regarding the mansion) let go.

Rogue's footsteps left prints in the carpet like snow, freshly fallen. It was these Logan secured his gaze to, a horse tethered to the back of a moving wagon, these he studied, though their owner walked only a few feet ahead. His eyes traced their shapes, their ghostly depth, like the tracks of some wounded prey, admiring the special design of a limp. He did so tiredly, almost absently, as if viewing another's craftsmanship-he could not quite decide if the hunter's role belonged to him in the analogy. These shadows did not lead to Rogue's room, the stairs, or even the kitchen, but down a hall that lost its familiarity in the strangeness of her choosing it.

"Where are you going?"

"Leave me alone."

"You're hurt."

"Fuck off."

"Don't always have to be such a bitch, darlin." His voice was not unkind.

Rogue did not reply, but continued on her weaving path to a door free of any markings, save for the scent of chalk, of furniture oil, of hopelessly aging flesh. "I think you need to lay down."

"Bite me," she said.

"Wasn't talking about that kind of lay-down, Kid, but if that's what you're in the mood for..."

She made a sound of irritation, a verbal roll of her eyes, or perhaps a sob, and wrenched at the door to Xavier's office. It swung open with great force, though not enough to allow his own passage. Her head turned, for just a breath of a moment, but she caught herself in time. Perhaps if she hadn't, perhaps if Logan had seen the look on her face, he would not have allowed that panel of oak to swing shut. But he didn't, and it did. An expanse of over-polished wood took her place, like parchment when a crucial paragraph has been erased.

A heartbeat's worth of voices in the office, and then a quiet that filled his ears like sun warmed wax. There was no such thing as silence for a man, for a mutant, like Logan. And though later this fact stung like a fresh burn, his interest was overpowered by a deluge of frustration, like a river giving sudden way to an ocean and he found himself turning, turning away. The thought that none of this was natural or voluntary did not occur to him, and perhaps this was intentional as well.

And he was Logan again, with too little time allotted between the mission and the expected resumption of mansion life. The animal had retreated to the same place it did when, after a frenzy of fighting and fucking and refilling his dring as quickly as he could swallow the last, Logan would accidentally find himself alone with his thoughts.

And he couldn't remember how many men he'd killed tonight.

And Rogue had closed her eyes on the jet as if grateful at the idea that they may never open.

And her footprints had been visible because of the freshly vacuumed carpet. His were visible because of the blood.

And why did he care?

Why did he care?

Why did he care?

::::::::::::

After the mission, after the visit with Xavier, Rogue stayed in her room for four days. She did not appear for food, for team meetings, for laundry or those morning runs around the mansion. Four days is not much, except when one is waiting without distraction or a prescribed endpoint. And there was only so many excuses that could be made to himself or others as to why he needed to ascend the stairs to Ororo's old, to Rogue's new, attic room.

He passed by-though "passed by" is not a phrase that can really be used with the sole chamber on the top floor-her door several times a day, payed tribute to it like the most devout to an icon of faith. As some cross themselves, burn incense and sacrifices, kneel and dance to the morning and setting sun, so Logan listened outside with all the force his senses afforded. She _was_ there, inside, and she was alive; he could hear her heartbeat, could smell every puff of fragrance her body offered when it shifted. No movement, save for natural and involuntary ones, and the soft noises of those who are sleeping.

Jean said she was fine, perfectly stop worrying-did they throw a fit when he chose to avoid their company for a few days, or weeks, or months? She said no, of course not. Yes, she was sure. Quit obsessing. Since when did he become so nosy? Since when was he so interested in the doings of others? Stop it. Leave it alone, Logan. And leave me alone-I have classes to teach.

On the fifth evening, in one of the thin times between the visits to her door, Logan found Rogue in the kitchen. A coffee filter filled with grapes rested on the marble island; she was cutting thick slices of pot roast from its congealed place in the Tupperware bowl. With zest, though not so intense a hunger as one might expect from someone who hadn't eaten in half a week. Two boiled potatoes, speared and deposited with her fork, topped the meat on her plate like bulging eyes. She pushed this into the microwave, tapped a few buttons with familiar ease, slid the remaining leftovers back into the fridge. Both machines humming, grumbling, as they went about their job, issuing faint and artificial cold, faint and artificial heat.

He stood in the doorway, watching the soft bones play beneath the softer skin of her face, watching brown eyes that took in so much more than their subdued movements suggested, watching hands that should never be hidden move without gloves, and if there had been something he'd wanted to say to her, Logan's lips could not remember it. Rogue looked up at him, a slow and almost lazy sweep of her vision, down, away, and back again. And the expression she donned in the action was much calmer than anything he'd seen her wear. There was something different about her, something younger and peaceful-the absence, perhaps of the tired shadows beneath her eyes which healthier skin had cheerfully taken the place of.

The microwave sounded a series of beeps, a child's cries for attention on a task completed. She turned away, gathered her meal. Walked past him silently, with only one more glance that said something that cannot be recorded, because it does have a voice. Something that had the ring of _thank you_ and the breath of curiosity. And how could he say just how that look, that look, served to deepen his interest, like a spear sinking further into its warm-blooded target.

:::::

Rogue was someone else for a week after that evening. Someone quiet, someone breaking the surface of the depths that separated the world inside her from the world that surrounded. (And why, why? What was spoken, what was done, in the space that the unforthcoming walls of Xavier's office shielded? What was it that made her moods shift like the golden pendulum of a grandfather clock?) She ate with the team in the busy cafeteria, offered to halve and share whatever dessert or favored provision she'd managed to snag the last of. She'd accept advice, if the weather wasn't too poor for running, a bottle of water if it wasn't. She would abandon her work-out in the Danger Room when Logan and whatever students he'd been coerced into training came in, but sometimes stay, sit against the wall, and watch. Rogue would look at him when Logan asked her a question and sometimes, sometimes, she would answer.

But then, like the sudden thrashing of a candle's flame, her sleeping patterns became erratic, wholly and sharply incalculable. She'd be up, consuming days in a gulp of wakefulness, then retreating to her room for a few minutes or hours worth of a nap at a time, then for thirty minutes every other hour. She would take her lunch at three in the morning, at midnight, at nine. Impossible to predict, impossible to hold her company.

Like you, Jean said.

And her eyes turned cold and shuttered, blockaded like a fort under heavy fire. She looked at him like an unwanted visitor who'd overstayed his forced welcome, like any moment, any word, any action, would spark a fury whose only language was screams. Every sentence that passed her teeth was clipped, irritated, barbed. Why?

Why?

But sometimes, oh, sometimes, Rogue would come and sit beside him, watch a movie, a game, a newsreel. Silent and passive, without the tension or inexplicable anger that so often corded the muscles in her shoulders.

As if there were nothing wrong.

::::::::::::

Like all decent bars, this one was dark, with a tint of maroon that painted the air, rather than any similarly toned furnishings. A jukebox manufactured to look older than it was, for the sake of popular nostalgia against the far wall, crooning a neutral love song that nobody seemed to like or have the energy to change. A bar-top in the shape of an _**L **_,creating a long hall that permitted a few extra tables and a set of bathrooms at it's tip. There wasn't a cage, which might explain why this was the least favorite of Logan's few options, but if he wanted a fight the hunt for one was never too prolonged.

There were women, a good selection. Few with a disease he could sell-contagion did not concern Logan, though the odor and sensation of certain infected areas did. One or two-no, three-with necklines so low and skirts so high they have been undressed already. Good if he wanted something fast, wanted to bypass that time-consuming chore of removing clothes.

Logan nearly left when he first spotted her. He could have done so without being seen himself, though it was a small and not overpopulated room. He might even have been able to pick up one of the more attractive patrons on his way out, without speaking enough to draw her attention. He was in a poor mood, a restless mood, and not so inclined to spend time in the company of any but a stranger's.

Why, then, were his feet bringing him not to the door but the oak counter, to her, at once as out of place as a child in her mother's clothing and frighteningly comfortable in this atmosphere where misery pervaded even the most comfortable of scenes.

Her shoulders were slumped as if the weight of the thin jacket was too much to bear or escape. She sipped at her drink-was the tall glass her request, or did the bartender see something in her face, and deem it and her too delicate for a bottle?-as if trying to make it last the rest of her days. And when he dropped himself onto the stool beside her, she made a sound incredulous and aghast, like one who has been saved from drowning only to find a the rescue boat has sprung a leak, like discovering the character of a book she didn't like in one she did.

"How's it going, Kid?"

"Did you follow me?"

"Why would I follow you?"

"Because it's what your always doing."

Logan was silent. Mock contemplation, and then a grunt. "Not always."

The bartender came without being signaled, with a nod at Logan's preferred beer that was familiar enough to be worrisome. Beside him, Rogue took a deeper swallow of her drink and flinched as if it were something stronger. The shadows of exhaustion on her cheeks looked like bruises, like half-dried paint.

"What are you doing here, Kid?"

"I'm allowed to _leave_," she said, a high edge to her voice. Upset, defensive. Her chin jerked, stopping short before actually looking at him. For half the span of a breath she seemed close to tears, and her ire continued even after this had passed. There was nothing to say to this, nothing that wouldn't be harsher or weaker than Logan was willing to be with her.

He watched her sit, watched her drink, watched her wish for his absence, hate him for the stress relief that doing so provided. The amber liquid at the bottom of her glass took root in her throat faster than he had imagined it would, and she requested another in the whispery way of the inexperienced. (But had she not seemed perfectly at ease with the beer he'd given her that night in the kitchen?) The bartender-the sort who would have asked for her ID the moment she came in, inspected it under the strongest glasses and light he owned-refilled her glass from a spout in a long row of brothers, whose head wore a glossy Pabst label. She was grimacing even before it was pressed to her lips.

"Might be the shittiest beer you could have ordered, Kid."

"Not my fault." Defensive, again, and he wondered what she could have meant, even as a quick jerk of his throat muscles stole the last of his own brew. Rogue didn't want him here, but that this might be for reasons other than her usual, obscure ones did not immediately occur to him. Logan studied her profile, the smooth incline of her nose that ended in a bump and underscored her youth more that anything else, the dip where her lower lip stopped and her chin began, the eyelashes that curved upward like an impertinent bird in flight. These small characteristics filled his attention, a pitcher left to overrun.

But then he saw her eyes, how they were not studying the middle distance simply to avoid stumbling into his. Rather, they were fixed on a point, a table, a man sitting against the left wall, that hall the L-shaped counter made. A scraggly Italian with an overbite, a special green tint under olive skin. He was unmistakeably her target-when the man's arm would lift to ferry his scotch to its destination, when his head would turn this way or that, her gaze shifted to accommodate the gesture.

Beneath the counter-top, inscribed with years of spilt drinks and the weight of depressed elbows, her leg vibrated with impatient restraint. Logan understood, then, that his presence was the only factor holding Rogue from going over there.

His jaw tightened with the strength of the adamantium it carried-if the room had been even slightly quieter, the other patrons might have heard it. For no particular or understood reason, violent images began to fight for priority in his mind's eye. Logan thought of telling her that she could do better, that he could smell the immune boosters swimming in the streams of the Italian's blood, fighting the current of HIV.

So focused. Almost pathetically intent, was the expression on her face. He could tell her that it was too desperate, that it would turn men off. But why bother? Why should her stare make him uncomfortable? Anger, like greasy heat sank into his muscles. For the first time, in a setting that bore more familiarity than any other in his abbreviated memory, Logan felt out of place. He ordered another Molson, and then something triple its strength, and managed to make both disappear without tasting them. He considered leaving, but a stubbornness and a curiosity made him prefer her unwilling company to any other.

And so, he looked at her, looking at the man across the room, and they both were paying close attention when her subject was approached by another woman. She had unwashed hair that humidity and split ends had loaned a crown of frizz, a t-shirt that revealed her belly button and a ring that had turned the surrounding skin red with infection. Needle-thin arms that never stilled as she sidled up to him, as one who cannot determine if a dog's bark means play or danger.

The two spoke briefly-him, with disinterested derision, the woman with twitchy need-in half-code and muted gestures. The Italian gave her a nod, a flick of his gaze that sent his fidgety inquirer scurrying for-with, perhaps, less than the desired subtlety-the maple His/Her signs that denoted the bathrooms. She chose the Men's. In a score of moments, neither hurried or protracted, the Italian shook himself out of his chair and retraced her path. Utterly casual, utterly unobserved by any save Logan, Rogue, and perhaps the bartender-in whose financial interest it may have been to turn a blind eye.

He returned far too quickly, with far too unsatisfied an expression for the encounter to have been sexual, and Logan understood. "What's your fix, Kid?"

"Don't know what you're talking about," she said, too quickly, which was as good as a confirmation. Her voice was a stack of unweighted pages in a sudden wind, a flag being whipped mercilessly and unpatriotically in a storm. And it was easier, suddenly, to sit beside her in the thick silence, knowing what she would refrain from doing to avoid the shame of him paying witness to it.

Shortly after, Rogue set her glass down on the counter-carefully, as if there was some designated and important niche. Logan asked if she was going to finish it-more than half the weak brew remained, laying as if ashamed at its own taste.

Softer than he expected, she said no, "I'm tired", and looked him in the eye for the first time. Logan had never been stricken by a statement more true.

"Want a ride, Kid?"

.

_**Well? Is it rude, to say "well"? Forgive me, if so. I dearly, dearly hope that you have found this chapter to your liking, that it was understandable-and free of too many mistakes, as my Beta was rehearing, as I should be, for a concert. I spent most of today typing this up, and the rest attempting to fix what was typed, but lord knows there's probably much I have missed.**_

_**If this has not caused you to grit your teeth and seek out that bottle of Tylenol, I would be happier than any words can describe if you would leave a response in that beautiful review box down below. This would be me, down on my figurative knees. **_

_**Please, Thank You, and Goodnight.**_


	6. Chapter 6

To Run In Circles: Chapter Six

"You don't get to make those kind of decisions," Scott said. His voice was warm with the pleasure that came from denying Logan something, anything. The enjoyment of this activity seemed reciprocally related to how important the matter seemed: like now, with the walls meekly absorbing every snarled statement like a . It might have been one of Summer's few untainted hobbies left to him-aside from Jean's bi-annual blowjob and checkers.

"What the fuck do you want with her?"

"What _you_ want with her is a better question, though it's a bit obvious. Really, Logan, just get a prostitute-at least she'd be moderately interested."

"She's not fucking coming. She can't."

"As a matter of fact, Rogue can. And she is."

"If she-"

"-goes, you won't? What a shame. In that case, I can guarantee her place on the mission-but we'll miss you, Logan."

"You piece of rotting fuckin' shit. What-"

"Let go. Dammit, take your hands off of me or I'll blast your head off. I swear to-"

"She'll be hurt."

"What do you care? Let go. Let go of me, you crazy fucking..."

It took several moments of coughing before Summers could work up enough air and dignity to speak again. "Rouge will be fine."

"Wasn't last time."

"You don't know anything about it," Scott snapped, with a special acidity. But there was a discomfort in his eyes that had nothing to do with the bruises that circled his throat.

:::::::::::::

It was a hospital, or had been, though many years had passed since it's visitors would have referred to it as such. A small building in the mountains, it's surroundings a snug garment. More of a clinic, really, a retreat. Plenty of rooms for long-term patients but only a perfunctory E.R.-there were more easily accessed facilities for true emergencies.

A philanthropist had built it, a man with as much money as he had spare time and a streak of that rare and laughable desire to change the world. He had envisioned a center of healing, of generosity, of self-enrichment. A precious and free haven for those with the need but not the means for medical care. Our altruist put all of his energy and spirit-and, most effectively, his bank account, into the creation of such a place.

Naturally, three summers after achieving such a dream the government froze the last of the man's dwindling accounts and the clinic was seized as part of an IRS investigation.

The haven slipped out of the public eye and it's doors, which had stood open to anyone, now only unlocked for a shipment of-

"-mutants," The Professor said to the team. "The lab's not as large as ones we've broken before, but we've had a tip about this one and a chemical compound they're trying to manufacture."

"What will it do?"

"I don't know, Bobby." Xavier said, and his gaze flicked to where Rogue sat, silent and disinterested in the corner. "Let's find out."

:::::::::::::

She would not look at him, would not speak. Rogue treated Logan almost as coldly after the night in the bar as she did before it-but with a extra wariness now, ever-vigilant to what he might ask in her presence, or reveal within others. She did not respond to his quiet and not-so-quiet inquiries (the latter of which earned him furious looks from Jean), not to the suggestions that weren't suggestions that she should not be here, nor to the concern that even the blanket of gruffness could not cover.

Yet on the plane she allowed him to sit beside her, or at least did not make a great effort to move. They came to a careful landing in a clearing just large enough to hold the jet-Logan saw a few tree branches kiss the windows, and heard Scott hiss about the cost of paint damage.

And she gave him a very soft look as he deboarded, from the seat she hadn't yet left.

Only a few of them-Jean, and two others-descended the steps into what had been a storeroom for medical supplies. They stepped over the bodies of those pathetically outnumbered guards and vanished down the stairs like figments of a shadow's imagination.

The rest of them dispersed among the halls, the small chambers. Scott attached himself to Logan like a loose but determined strip of Velcro. Keeping an eye on him, of playing the role of restraining superior as only he could. But it was not until later that Logan-who was thinking too much of the girl left in the jet and feeling too little like the animal-thought this supervision might be keeping him from more than excessive violence. Or for him to attach more meaning to the fact that a collection of doctors was the best ready-made distraction for the Wolverine.

A casual, bright place that could have matched most descriptions of the generic office. Few employees than there otherwise might have been, though of course this was nighttime, and even the most devoted practitioners of cruelty do not work twenty-four seven. Water coolers and bowls of peppermints, a rather tired-looking vending machine. A secretary whose skull was quickly and cleanly cracked against the edge of her desk, before she could do more than draw breath to scream. Papers that Scott winced at, muttered "Admittance forms", with a glare.

An entirely ordinary clinic, though entirely ordinary clinics do not usually possess guards who shoot on sight, or locked doors every few feet. Nor an open closed that brimmed with boxes-dirt stained, bloodstained apparel on the right, personal items that might serve a monetary or souvenir purpose on the left.

Little to be seen until the second floor, from whence came the sound and glimpsing sights of a bustling crowd. The theory that most of the workers had gone home was pushed away. Scott dispensed a pair of their silent group down one of the halls, left another two to guard against attempted escape at the entrance and, with a younger boy, commenced down the busier of paths.

There were cages. A room of them. Thick bars, spots of rust and the scent of terror. Empty, save two, in which the starved husks of what had been people lay.

There were doctors. White coats, and for an absent and rare philosophical moment Logan wondered what could make them believe their jobs were still connected to that symbol of healing. But it was a quick though, one he forgot the moment he'd had it.

There were two employees examining and discussing a stack of X-Rays, and a nurse who walked in. Dealt with quickly because Scott like to maintain the element of surprise, that grey and tense calm fro as long as possible.

There was a sign, held to the ceiling by two weak chains. The embossed letters "O" and "R" and the last corridor their route offered.

There were metal beds and white sheets, speckled red with the discharge of their previous occupants. Leather straps at their head and foot, and a room in which these restraints were no longer necessary. The person they'd held-naked, blue, with a tail that dangled off the table and to the floor-had long since lost the ability to struggle.

There were needles dipping in and out of a dead arm. Voices speaking a long list of chemical names and comparing how long this one lasted to the others. Figures that might have been shaped from clay for all the humanity Logan saw in them. And that fragile quiet shattered.

There was blood.

There were screams.

There were running footsteps that were cut off, and never sounded again.

There was Scott, saying, "Enough. Enough, Logan," though not half so insistently as usual. The young team member who'd accompanied them, trying to look brave and and not to puke with an equal lack of success. A hand that reached out as if to restrain the bloodier, clawed one, but knew better than to actually do so.

There were orders, a tone that was as shaky as threadbare tires on a gravel road. "Logan...Logan, move...move those bodies against the wall. No, not that one. I think we should...should bring the victims with us, give them a proper burial-oh, for fucks sake, just do it. I don't care how it makes the plane smell. Wrap him in something. Bobby, get those papers. Stay here and give Logan a hand. I'm...I'm...I'm... going to find the others, let John know we need him-we'll be setting fire to this place shortly. Use the COM if you need me."

Scarlet puddles lay on the floor, and made indelicate squelching noises underfoot, hung on the walls, the effects of an overeager artist. Logan was left pushing, rolling, dragging men in varying states of recognizable into a space-saving pile, glowering at Bobby's tremulous motions until the boy gave up at the pretense of help and stood in the corner, fighting tears.

There was no satisfaction found here, only weariness and an incomprehensible nausea, not enough energy to grunt with more than mild irritation at Bobby. Logan stripped a few doctors of their hypocritical attire and wrapped them over and around the dead mutant on the table. Vague pity, but no particular interest in doing so. This was nothing, after all, but the casing of a bullet that had long been discharged.

There was a scent. A tendril of an aroma that tickled his passages, the petals of a demanding flower. Thin and distinct as a line of thread, cutting through all the space and material that separated Logan from it's source.

A thought, no firmer than smoke. Intuition, that was considerably stronger. Realization, recognition of what should have been obvious.

"Wait here," he told the young team member.

His wobbling lips parted in surprise. "Cyclops said-"

"Gonna make a circuit, see if there's anything we've missed. When I get back I'll bring the corpse to the jet...You can wait here, or you can carry it yourself."

The boy nodded reluctantly, and behind Logan heard the sound of retching, as distance between him and the room grew.

::::::::::::

Can a thing which has only happened twice be called a ritual? Or was what Logan saw only two points of a long pattern? Logan stood at the rim of the main lobby, where a filing cabinet made its home and his shelter, with that skill that comes from long being a student of Stealth's art.

He watched him bring her in. Scott this time, instead of Jean-a ridiculous sort of chivalry in he way he ushered her along. A look on her face, a thinness to her lips that spoke of preparing oneself for an unpreparable pain. A fear in her scent that was no tint or shadow but consumed the whole of her being; showed itself in everything from the glossy wetness in her eyes, to the hesitant placement of each food, to the agitated twists of the gloves she wore. The whole of Logan's body was thrumming with that electric instinct that recognizes something wrong, something dangerous-though rarely had this warning sounded for someone other than himself.

And it didn't matter how little he knew her, how even less he understood of what was going on. It didn't matter that his interference was resented by even the subject of it, that such nosiness was a quality he deplored, would loathe in any other case but this. It didn't matter that he wouldn't have been interested, may even have approved of what was going on if it had been anyone, anyone but her.

Logan held himself still, waited with that goal of overdue explanation as Rogue was led down the basement steps. He listened to the rhythm and tempo to judge their distance, the echo of the sound to estimate the size of the chambers beneath and the likelihood of being seen-and then followed.

The lower level had long surpassed it's destiny as a cramped supply close, though the first walls still bore empty shelves from the days of their innocent use. The place had been expanded, a long corridor carved from the soil. The walls were a dark, glossy metal that reflected him, cold and silent. Narrow, slick, like the interior of a languid snake. Immediately easy to see that the rest of the building, no matter what cruel purposes it was put to-may as well have been a painted mask to this, the true lab. A row of broken cameras in one section, vomiting sparks and stray wires-Jubilee's work, he guessed. Sliding doors that had been broken open, and guards that were holding the guns that had planted the bullets so deep in their skulls-Jean's.

Voices far ahead, and the distant figures of Rogue and Scott, who did not look behind them. An opening that had been forcefully blown into the metal door, into which they disappeared and to which Logan crept. Murmurs, broken snatches of phrases, a light which flickered as bodies passed before it, a wide space and-

A large room, longer than it was wide but crowded with shelves and cabinets, technical devices that Scott would have killed for-and indeed managed to find their way onto the jet for the home journey. Tables laden with computers and all manner of test tubs, microscopes and things he could not name. Empty spaces of things that had already been carried to The Blackbird.

All this he saw in a moment's forward shadow, that special breath of silence before the opening note of a song begins. All of Logan's attention, all of his being, was arrested and held to the little drama that was acting itself out before him.

Eight people were kneeling on the floor, tied and sporting bruises. Some wore lab-coats, others plastic aprons, all expressions of a bottomless fear. Pale, gagged, with rapidly shifting gazes that could not believe such a dreaded nightmare had become corporeal.

It was to and among these that Rogue moved; around these that Scott and Jean stood-offering halfhearted words of encouragement. The rest of the team must have been sent on to the jet with what comprised of their loot. Logan started forward, but froze, shifted back just as quickly in a blurring twitch of muscles. _Wait_, he thought, surprise and a helpless, regrettable curiosity keeping him in place.

Her back was to him, but her scent was more expressive, more honest than anything her face could show. Quavering fingers pulled away the cloth that covered her right hand. She stepped up to one of the prisoners, an grandfatherly man with eyes that sought mercy in one surely too young, too pretty, too normal-looking to be a mutant. Rogue cupped, cradled the man's cheek with the assurance of the closest of friends. The first moment of this touch saw hope on the prisoner's face, the second confusion, a little fear and an attempt to pull away-and horror when he could not. Terror, and, to Logan's own shock, pain, though that hand could not have been more gentle.

Veins like pulsing, writhing blue worms appeared under his skin. his irises rolled up until only white was visible in the almond-shaped sockets. He gagged, shuddered, and finally, finally toppled over, freed from that magnetic touch not by his own will but by the strength of death. His body sagged against the floor, limp and empty.

The other hostages gave cries of fear-muffled, of course, by the cloth in their mouths. Logan's own alarm mingled with appreciation for the violent for of a fellow artist. If it hadn't been her, hadn't been Rogue, perhaps the latter sentiment may have prevailed. If he could have seen the wet trails sparkling over her cheeks, perhaps only the former would have.

In any case, Rogue had moved on before the corpse's head had struck the tiled floor. She grabbed the throat of the nearest lab employee with deceptively rough efficiency. Bound, he struggled and flailed, but though her grasp was not a particularly strong one he could not seem to break it. Pain came faster for him, those bulging veins that offered the impression that his very soul was pumping out. And when death took it's place as well she let him fall, thrust him from her like the collar of a biting dog.

And the dread that had been stewing in him all night, for many nights, rose within Logan with a scathing steam. While two other mansion residents stood to the side, supervisors on an unappealing chore looking on with barely concealed distaste, those hands that Rogue was leading to the next hostage, the next lab employee, the next victim-those hands were shaking.

"Hows it going, Kid?"

She jerked around as if spun on an invisible dial. Faster still, however, was the icy grasp that descended over his mind, as cloyingly restraining as a drug and the cutting voice of Jean_. "Wolverine, get the hell out of here. Leave. Get out! Go board The Blackbird."_

It was not a command she could have expected him to heed with anything less than the sum of her telepathic ability. And it was this sum that she focused on him now, a ruthless insistence that was almost as potent as the look in Rogue's eyes. That expression of utmost hurt and shame, that knowledge that your worst side had been seen by the one person you wished to hide it from. Fleeting, and tortured, and agonizingly familiar.

Years of succumbing to no will but his own, Jean's greatly overestimated opinion of her own abilities and that look-god, that look-kept Logan from acquiescing. Scott's imprudent yanks on his arm were even more ineffective-those bearing adamantium skeletons are not easily tugged.

Neither, however, could he step forward. He could not move his arm, could not turn his head, could not move in any way. It was as if cords leashed him from all sides, all irresistible, all unyielding, pulling with all the force of that presence in his mind and-what? What was that tie binding him to Rogue?

Jean was livid, enraged...but underneath, underneath ran a current of shame that the harshness of her voice could not hide. She issued a litany of orders, of threats, of censures both viscous and unimportant because Logan was hardly listening. They died out into a frustrated silence, in which the the pressure on his mind (an intrusion that had always been forbidden and would never be forgotten) never relented. Meanwhile, Rogue had ducked his gaze, dodged it like the sharpest of blows. Some words from Scott-"Go on, continue, Rogue. Ignore him. It's okay."-and she turned back to the hostages. Two had been attempting to crawl away in the absence of their attention and the probable influence Jean had been wielding to keep them in place.

He heard her swallow convulsively, watched little shudders break through the calm she was trying and failing to keep, and fought harder to move, to reach for her. Desperately she pressed her hands-those hands, those pale, pretty, terrifying hands-to another lab worker. They were not deaths that Logan would normally blink at, nothing that could even enter the range of some of his work. But it was not them, never them, for whom was concerned.

It was the fifth hostage-a chubby man who smelled of frightened urine, and blinking in a way that spoke of glasses crushed somewhere in the room-that the shudders lost their randomness. A constant, hard tremor-nervous, fierce as if she'd just been pulled from the iciest of lakes. A cough fought it's way up her throat and was followed by a equally unkind series of its brothers. Any air found between these was a prize in a til-death match. Her hand, when not occupied by its strange and gruesome task, rose to the bridge of her nose as if forcing back what was trying to escape the gates of her mind.

Logan tried to speak, to utter some bridling word, but could not make his lips frame her name. The animal in him thrashed, snapped its jaws-from the corner of his eye he saw Jean flinch.

For what was far from the first time, he wondered what purpose this bizarre method of execution served-when, despite their fine presentation of higher morals any of the others could have done a much more efficient job.

One hostage left, a woman with pretty blond hair and a chubby face. She had forgone the struggles which had offered so little aid to her coworkers. She was curled in a ball, huddled against the forever motionless legs of friend-still warm, of course, because what felt like ages passing in this room had only been a span of minutes. She'd been reduced to the state of so many of the subjects who'd filled the cages above, her gag wet with the tears and snot that ran with equal fervor, issuing pleas that emerged only as cartoonish moans.

Rogue's feet stumbled, stuttered like the missed notes of a poor musician. Her breath was unkind waves striking rock, shallow and rapid. She swayed, stretched her fingers toward the woman and drew it back, brought it to her forehead.

She turned to him, to Logan, and that look was there again. It was almost, almost as compelling as the trickle of blood making it's way from her ear.

And that had force that had been drawing him away snapped, the frailest of strings.

.


End file.
